Page:Home rule through federal devolution.djvu/19

 therefore already decadent when it fell into the hands of his successor, who had no mark of that resolute masterfulness which the Irish, in an eminent degree, look for in a leader. The Sinn Feiners came forward with a defined object, and with a promise of vigorous action and of ultimate success. What wonder if they captured the imagination, and carried away the feeling, of an impressionable people weary of "waiting for something to turn up."

It is therefore not to be inferred, from the result of the recent election, that the Irish farmers are convinced republicans. They have probably no settled convictions as to forms of government, but they are obsessed with a sort of parody of the Monroe doctrine, and are ready to shout, and vote, for the party that asserts this insular aloofness from any form of Weltpolitik, and resolutely stands between them and conscription, with its resultant of an enforced participation in foreign complications which they are determined to keep out of at all hazards. The Roman Catholic Church, though no friend to Republicanism or independence of thought and action, acquiesces, with something less than absolute impartiality, in this aloofness.

From the ethical point of view it would not seem that, in the recent crisis, brought about by the very unwise action of the Government in the matter of conscription, the conduct of the Sinn Feiners is any more blameworthy than that of Cobden in the 'fifties, or of The Daily News and The Manchester Guardian in 1914. But in Ireland everything is poisoned by our unquenchable religious animosities, in combination with the perennial ineptitude of our oscillatory Government. There can be no chance of conciliation or stability in Ireland so long as its Government is bound up with the English party system, by which continuity of general policy and steadfastness of administration are rendered hopeless.

It is not only that with every change of Ministry at Westminster there is a similar change at the Castle—as likely as not entailing a radical change of policy in the